Title

PhD

Organisation

Medical Council of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Position

Director, Psychometrics and Assessment Services

Title key note

Peering Through the Looking Glass: How Advances in Technology, Psychometrics and Philosophy are Altering the Assessment Landscape in Medical Education

Abstract

The science of assessment has undergone a number of changes that potentially not only alter the ways in which practitioners might conceive of evaluation but also impact the strategies employed to measure the competencies of candidates, from undergraduate medical education through physician revalidation efforts.   Advances in technology now permit the assessment of a broad range of competencies via computer as well as the automated marking of tasks. Bayesian networks capitalize on the strengths of several disciplines to model a host of outcomes, including assessment for learning and the impact of diagnostic feedback. Finally, programmatic assessment suggests a new paradigm which integrates both learning and assessment in a recursive fashion. This session will outline key activities in each of these areas.

Biography

André De Champlain, PhD, is Director of Psychometrics and Assessment Services at the Medical Council of Canada. He is involved in a number of projects at Council, including the review of current scoring and standard setting methodologies for MCC examinations in light of the new MCC Qualifying Examination blueprint, as well as several research studies aimed at better informing and supporting policy and current developments, both at the licensure and post-licensure levels. In addition, he is responsible for overseeing a number of innovative research areas at the MCC, including automated item generation as well as automated marking of constructed-response items. Finally, he is a chief contributor to efforts aimed at re-conceptualizing the LMCC program, in light of recent trends in medical education research and assessment more broadly. Dr. De Champlain previously spent nearly 15 years at the National Board of Medical Examiners, where he acted as lead research psychometrician for several USMLE examinations.